Memorandum
City of Lawrence
City Manager’s Office
TO: David L. Corliss, City Manager
CC: Diane Stoddard, Assistant City Manager
FROM: Corey Mohn, Economic Development Coordinator
DATE: April 11, 2011
RE: 2011 Update to Residential Inventory Analysis
This memo provides an update to the available residential lot inventory conducted on January 27, 2010 by Roger Zalneraitis. The update finds that based on current market conditions, there is sufficient inventory to meet four to eight years of demand for single family residential housing. The decrease in the time that existing inventory will support demand is a result of a slight increase in permit activity in 2010 from 2009, as well as a sharp decline in platted residential lots from 2001 to present as compared to 1999-2009.
Previous Report
The residential lot inventory of January 2010 found that there were 4,087 lots platted from 1999 to 2009. Of those, 761 lots were available for construction with infrastructure to the property, and 1,308 lots remained available for construction when including lots without infrastructure. In 2009, there were 110 single family residential permits issued for new construction. Assuming the pace of single family residential permit issuance continued, the available lots represented up to 12 years of available inventory for the community.
Inventory Update
From January 1, 2001 to April 5, 2011, there were approximately 2,960 residential lots platted in Lawrence. This is a substantial drop from the 2010 analysis which showed total lots of 4,087. This is primarily the result of dropping 884 residential platted lots out of the analysis that were filed in 1999 and 2000. (These lots were platted more than 10 years ago and therefore are not in the range currently being analyzed.) Likely the result of the economic slowdown, only 53 total residential lots were added in 2010 and the beginning of 2011.
Of the 2,960 lots available at the beginning of April 2011, about 649 of them remained available for development:
Additionally, 479 lots platted in the last 10 years still have no sewer or water (infrastructure). It is unclear at this time when these lots may receive infrastructure. The 649 lots with infrastructure in the 2010 analysis represent about 22% of the total stock of newly-platted lots, up from 20% in the 2010 analysis.
Across the City as a whole, there are 1,128 available lots for development (this includes the 649 lots in recently platted subdivisions). This represents a decrease of 180 available lots from last year’s analysis. The decrease is primarily the result of dropping 1999 and 2000 activity from the analysis, but may also be reflective of the fact that nearly three times as many residential permits were issued in 2010 than residential lots were added to the inventory.
New Residential Construction
There were 162 residential building permits were issued in 2010:
There were 146 single family residential permits issued (compared to 110 single family residential permits in 2009), 10 duplex permits issued (representing 20 units of new construction), and six apartment permits issued. Of the apartment permits, five were issued for 546 Frontier (representing 96 units), and one was issued for 4430 Bauer Farm Drive (representing 124 units). In total, 386 new units of residential housing were built.
A map of the residential lots platted from January 1, 2001 to April 5, 2011 and the building permits issued is available in the Appendix to this report.
Residential Building Lot Inventory
The residential lots listed in Table 1 are predominantly single family residential units. Therefore, this analysis will use them as a proxy for all available single family residential units in the City.
With approximately 649 single family residential lots with infrastructure available in areas platted from January 1, 2001 to April 5, 2011, in current market conditions this represents over four years of market demand. In other words, the market demand of 146 new single family residential units could be maintained for that time period. However, we also saw in Table 1 that 1,832 lots platted since 2001 have housing on them. The historic rate of demand is thus about 179 units per year. At that rate of development, the 649 single family lots would accommodate just less than four years of growth.
There are a total of 1,227 available residential lots in the City. This implies that there are 578 additional single family residential lots available in older subdivisions.
Finally, there are 479 residential lots that are platted but have no infrastructure. If these are added to the 649 available single family residential lots with infrastructure, the inventory rises from being able to accommodate four years of current demand to being able to accommodate nearly eight years of current demand. Under historic demand scenarios, there would be a little more than six years of inventory available for single residential family housing. This is calculated using the average number of residential permits per year since 2001 which calculates to approximately 179 permits per year.
The 2010 Residential Inventory Analysis estimated that existing and potential inventory (lots that do not yet have infrastructure) could accommodate between five and 14 years worth of demand. There now appears to be between four and eight years of demand. Additionally, there has been a sharp decline in available lot inventory when looking over the past ten years. The fact that demand appears to be greater now is a reflection of fewer platted residential lots, a function of losing 1999 and 2000 data from the analysis as both were high-activity years for residential platting.
